Intervention | Amanda Coogan: You don’t push the river

Amanda Cooganb. IrelandYou don’t push the river (2016)

For eight hours each day the Irish Artist Amanda Coogan will walk the gallery. She carries with her a few objects to distinguish this activity; 3 ladders and 25 meters of fabric.

With the use of ladders and Coogan’s innovative costumes, the body of the artist and time, always time, Coogan proposes to explore strangeness in the ordinary. Ladders, Coogan suggests, are a means to change our position, to transport us to a completely different place. She walks, carrying this possibility; awkward, heavy and dangerous. The fabric she carries, drapes and wraps suggesting infinite allegories. Time and duration radically effect the live performance, with extensive amounts of time invite chaos, the unknown , failure, and moments of terrible beauty.

Coogan plays with a poetic reading of the materials she employs. The meaning making for this newly commissioned work is porous, the audience is invited to 'read' the performance through their experience.

Irish artist Amanda Coogan is one of the most dynamic contemporary performance artists. Her recent exhibition in the Dublin's Royal Hibernian Academy was described by Artforum as 'performance art at its best'.

Her extraordinary work is challenging, provocative and always visually stimulating. Using gesture and context she makes allegorical and poetic works that are multi-faceted, and challenge expected contexts. Time is a key material in Coogan's live performances where she allows the unpredictable and chance of extended periods of time to flow over and drive the process of the works. Coogan was a masters student of Abramovic, 2000, and completed her PhD in 2013. In 1994/95 she was a visiting student at Athens School of Art.

'I'll sing you a song from around the town', Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibereen. March - April 2016

Carnage Visors, Rua Red, Dublin, March - April 2016

'As One', Benaki Museum, Athens. April 2016

2116, Glucksman Gallery, Cork, March 2016

'The Museum of August Destiny', Lismore Castle, Waterford, July 2016

'Run to the Rock', Shakespeare Re-worked; British Council and Belfast Arts Festival, October 2016